President Fernandez Criticizes the IMF at UN Assembly

Alberto Fernandez during his speech at UNGA, Sept. 21, 2021 | Photo: Twitter/ @UzReport

Published 22 September 2021

The Argentinean president also called for a reconfiguration of the global financial architecture.

During the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Tuesday, Argentina's President Alberto Fernandez harshly criticized the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

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In a pre-recorded message, he described the IMF loans granted to President Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) as "an irresponsible and toxic indebtedness."

"To give the world an idea of the magnitude of this 'debticide', I would like to mention a figure. The resources approved by the IMF to Argentina... were US$57 billion, the equivalent of all the funds this organization granted to 85 countries in the year of the pandemic," Fernandez stated.

"There is no technical rationality, ethical logic, or political sensitivity that can justify such an aberration... A large part of the resources granted to Argentina left the country due to an irresponsible opening of the capital account."

Fernandez also denounced that Latin American countries allocate 57 percent of their exports to the payment of foreign debt services and stressed the need to establish a multilateral framework for the restructuring of the middle-income countries debt levels.

He called for a reconfiguration of the global financial architecture, stressing that there is a latent risk of a general financial meltdown in developing countries.

Finally, he described the G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) as a valuable but insufficient alternative as it does not address debt relief and debt restructuring in depth.